This Sunday is D-Day for Superbowl XLII, where the country gathers around the television to watch two teams of tough, rugged, trained and taut manly men compete in the testosterone-laden game of football. There’s no room for “gay stuff” in this game, ok? Oh, maybe not ok.

According to this article, one of the teams competing in this year’s championship at UP’s Football Stadium has some not-so-out gay guys on their team. That’s not all, there’s said to be at least a 15% rate of gay men playing in the professional league today. Gives a new meaning to towel-snapping in the locker room.

The author Ian Halperin (my guest on last Sunday’s radio show and author of Hollywood Undercover) drops another bomb about one more lucrative American institution which is attempting to hide its anti-gay attitudes. We can certainly understand why. With as much money as the NFL generates in advertising revenue, franchise rights, and merchandising it’s no wonder they want to keep it’s membership in the “gay” club a secret. Here’s what Forbes had to say about the NFL’s financials:

The National Football League is the most valuable and profitable team sport in the world. This year the average team is worth $733 million, a 17% increase over last year. Operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for the 32 teams came in at $851 million on revenue of $5.3 billion, an operating margin of 16%. Baseball teams come the closest in valuations to football, with an average value of $295 million (see: “The Business Of Baseball”). When we last looked at the National Basketball Association, the second most profitable sport, the league’s operating margin was only 6.5% (see: “The Business Of Basketball”).

The league’s national television contract ($17.6 billion over eight years) is responsible for the NFL’s rich team valuations, and a cap on player salaries of no more than 65% of specified revenue explains the fat margin.

That’s not chump change, and one can only speculate how the average “male” would respond to knowing some his favorite players are in fact, playing for the same team, so to speak. Here’s what Ian revealed to Queerty:

We’ve always thought American football to be a little faggy and now we have the totally unsubstantiated proof! Scientology exposer Ian Halperin - who infiltrated the “religion” by posing as a gay actor looking for a queer cure - tells us that a footballer basically outed the entire National Football League, especially the NY Giants:

“One NFL star told me at least 15 percent of players in the NFL league are, and another 20 percent are bi. Interestingly, he said the NY Giants, who are in this year’s super bowl, have at least a half dozen players who are gay.”

When I asked Ian how he came upon this information, he explained:

“Basically, I was explaining to the reporter that during my time at COS [Church of Scientology] I discovered that COS was not the only entertainment or well known entity that was homophobia. I learned this after talking to an NFL star at a big Hollywood party I was invited to while I was undercover.”

Well, I’ll chalk this one up as a “wait and see” whether it pans out as being accurate. But you can also look at it this way, if 1 in 10 men taken from any random sample are designated as being gay, or in other words 10% of the population and there are 74 registered players on the NYGiants roster, that’s 7.4 gay football players on the Giants alone. Not sure about that .4% guy. Maybe he’s just confused.

As an aside, I don’t think being “macho” and “gay” are mutually exclusive. Men are men any way you slice it. You can have effeminate gays and very “butch” gays. There’s no rule which states being gay equates to not liking football. Gay people are just people who have a defined sexual orientation as being attracted to the same sex. This does not mean however, they can’t also like watching dudes pound each other in the dirt. In fact, I’d think that could be kind of appealing to anyone, regardless of their preferences.

To be fair, I contacted the Giants home office in East Rutherford, NJ and would like to give them an opportunity to speak to the veracity of this statement. I will post any updates or statements from their public relations people.